


Monochrome to Color

by samidha



Series: Photographs 'verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2018-12-01 15:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/samidha
Summary: A 6.11 coda in 3 parts. This is Part #2





	Monochrome to Color

On the second day after Sam woke up, it rained. Dean found Sam curled up in his seat in the Impala again with Robert Plant crooning from the stereo, loud enough to make the windows rattle. _In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn. All I want for you to do is take my body home_. Sam’s face was hidden from view. Dean hesitated, raising his knuckles to rap on the window but pulling back at the last second. He watched as Sam wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his corduroy jacket while the lyrics floated by. He stepped back, letting the music fill their corner of the yard, and as the song ended Sam just sat there, his jaw tight and his eyes clouded with clear grief.

He felt a wash of relief at the sight of real, discernible emotions on his brother’s face. Guilt flooded through him next as he realized he was watching a moment of real pain, and doing nothing to take it away.

In all the hell both of them had been through, there were precious few moments that had undone his brother to the point of tears.

He took a deep breath and focused on what he had come to get his brother for. _C’mon, Sam... Time to come inside. Gotta eat. There’s mac and cheese._

Sam was silent for a beat. Then he pulled himself out of the seat with a murmured _yeah_ and clicked the door open, pushed through it.

He was caught in a sudden rush of closeness with his brother, heady and beautiful after so long living in real terror of Sam’s otherness, dread at what the thing wearing his brother would possibly do next. He let himself revel in the sheer certainty of Sam’s _Sam-ness_. He moved to Sam’s side, matched Sam’s stride in a show of solidarity. 

They made it inside, out of the rain, Sam dripping everywhere and shivering in only a grey t-shirt and jeans, the most under-dressed Dean had seen him in ages. He gestured toward the clothes. “What’s that about?”

Sam shrugged. “I wanted to....” He trailed off, let the words hang there between them.

They were sitting down with two platefuls of macaroni when Sam caught his eyes, lowering his fork. “Dean?”

“Yeah, Sammy?”

“I... How long has it been?”

“Since when?”

“Since...Jess. Since...Dad. God, since anything.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Jess. Start with Jess.”

And so he did.

*~*~*

He hated the way Dean looked at him, like he was dragging him along in this private hell. He wasn’t. Dragging Dean. If anything, Dean was hitching the ride with him, refusing to let go and let Sam.... Let him what? Sam’s whole reality seemed to be private grief, tears he couldn’t hold back.

He was silent the whole time, even as his shoulders shook and his face fell in on itself, wave after wave of grief and confusion and dread knocking him back again and again.

 _Five years_ , he told himself, he was living out all the pain of five years gone, rocketing through him and leaving him unable to be of any real use at anything else.

He saw an answering grief rise in Dean’s eyes, hot and bright and sudden before his brother clamped down on it, features smoothing out unnaturally, and he thought of Dean’s words, of the impossibility of _And then you died, and I made a deal._

 _I only had forty years_ , Dean had said, _Could have been eternity._

Then the grief had changed, an undercurrent of the deepest anger he had ever felt pushing up through everything, until he couldn’t see straight with it.

It was hours before he could form words.

_Dean, this isn’t living. We aren’t living._

Dean just looked at him and shrugged, stone-faced and eyes dark, and said nothing.

*~*~*

 _Yeah_ , he’d wanted to say, _Sammy, I know._ But what then? Would they just roll over and take it, lie down and let go? He’d been kicked while he was down so many goddamn times now, if he let himself go down that road he would probably never get up again. And then what use would he be? There was Sam now, finally, suddenly, absolutely Sam, and he would have to be enough, just like always.

They ate three meals a day, ate like kings, all the food they could want, and he focused on the fact that Sam never once teased him, skimmed over the why of it, the way Sam was flattened by an onslaught of memories that had faded with time for Dean, had stopped knocking the air out of him with every second thought. 

He kept up his role, slowly recounting Sam’s past back to him and letting Sam ask the questions.

But Sam didn’t ask, for once in his goddamn life, and Dean couldn’t examine that too closely, just--couldn’t.

He watched every story hit Sam in the gut, watched a sea of memories wash over his brother, fresh and raw and miserable with every detail, each one building on top of the last to form one gigantic horror show.

Recounting everything for his brother, he realized one amazing benefit he had on his side. Every time he watched Sam flinch under a new onslaught of memory, he realized it again. He had time on his side. He had been able to squash these details down, pin them up like dark room prints and watch with satisfaction as with every passing moment they faded from view.

Most of them, anyway. Enough of them.

He watched the wall come tumbling down one flash of memory at a time. He braced Sam physically, held him firm by the arm, and if Sam shook he didn’t say a word, just let it bleed into him, course through him, and grounded them both through it.

He let Sam press close, hoped that his solidness would be enough to hold them both up through this, knowing it would have to be enough. Just like always.


End file.
